In present semiconductor technology, CMOS devices, such as nFETs or pFETs, are typically fabricated upon semiconductor wafers, such as Si, that have a single crystal orientation. In particular, most of today's semiconductor devices are built upon Si having a (100) crystal orientation.
Electrons are known to have a high mobility for a (100) Si surface orientation, but holes are known to have high mobility for a (110) surface orientation. That is, hole mobility values on (100) Si are roughly 2×–4× lower than the corresponding electron mobility for this crystallographic orientation. To compensate for this discrepancy, pFETs are typically designed with larger widths in order to balance pull-up currents against the nFET pull-down currents and achieve uniform circuit switching. pFETs having larger widths are undesirable since they take up a significant amount of chip area.
On the other hand, hole mobilities on (110) Si are 2× higher than on (100) Si; therefore, pFETs formed on a (110) surface will exhibit significantly higher drive currents than pFETs formed on a (100) surface. Unfortunately, electron mobilities on (110) Si surfaces are significantly degraded compared to (100) Si surfaces.
As can be deduced from the above discussion, the (110) Si surface is optimal for pFET devices because of excellent hole mobility, yet such a crystal orientation is completely inappropriate for nFET devices. Instead, the (100) Si surface is optimal for nFET devices since that crystal orientation favors electron mobility.
Co-pending and co-assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/250,241, filed Jun. 17, 2003, provides an approach to fabricate CMOS devices on hybrid orientations wherein the pFETs are formed on a (110) surface orientation and nFETs are formed on a (100) surface orientation. Because hole mobility is greater than 150% higher on (110) orientation than on (100) orientation, the performance of pFETs is greatly enhanced from conventional CMOS technology. Despite the enhancement, the nFETs remain the same as conventional CMOS.
In view of the above, there is a need for providing integrated semiconductor devices that are formed upon a substrate having different crystal orientations that provide enhanced device performance for a specific type of device. The enhanced device performance is required for both nFETs and pFETs thereby improving upon the technology described in co-pending and co-assigned U.S. application Ser. No. 10/250,241.